Dungeon Keeper

Base-building is de rigueur these days, what with all those survival games, Minecraft, Fallout 4 and now Fortnite, but before all that we had tiny top-down or isometric worlds in which we diligently built cities and dungeons and theme parks and rail networks. The central appeal of management games was and is that they give us an idealised sense of what it is like to…

The original Dungeon Keeper was one of the first sims to let you be a truly evil monster, but the kind of monster with farty demon underlings who helped you engage in all manner of hijinks. Bullfrog Entertainment's 1997 masterpiece spiritually lives on through War for the Overworld, which is probably something the good folks at Brightrock Games are tired of hearing. Before it's a…

There are more wonderful games being released on PC each month than ever before. In such a time of plenty, it's important that you spend your time as wisely as possible. Thankfully, we're here to help. What follows are our picks for the best PC games ever made.

Most games that put you into the shoes of the bad guys are about reveling in evil, gleefully causing havoc and destruction like a toddler who's got into the stationary box. Obsidian's RPG Tyranny [official site] is different. “I find a lot of fiction that centers around good versus evil tends to be unsatisfying, as evil always exists as a strawman for the ill-prepared underdogs…

The original Dungeon Keeper [Origin page] is free for a limited time, through Origin. If you download it before the offer expires (EA aren't saying how long it'll last), you can keep it forever, or until your Origin account turns to dust - whichever comes first. First released in 1997, Dungeon Keeper is a strategy game in which you manage an underground lair, protecting your…

I'm extremely intrigued bySubaltern's magic school management game No Pineapple Left Behind [official site]. The more I look, the more it seems like its superficially wwwwwacky and zzzzzany concept of 'what if you could turn kids into pineapples to make them easier students?' is there to guide people into what might be both a biting and deep management game about the education system. There is…

Dungeons 2 [official site] is a strategy-management game which borrows heavily from Dungeon Keeper - to whit, you're an evil overlord building a vast underground lair then training up a bestial army within it. After a series of disappointments, might this be the much-needed heir to Bullfrog's classic? It's out tomorrow, and here's what I think. There's a room type in Dungeons 2 called The…

Dungeon Keeper has always felt important to me, and I’ve rarely analysed why, for the same reason I don’t question why I like cheddar cheese or very tall buildings. For my young sensibilities, it was the right game the right time, and as such it feels like it’s almost always been there: “I like Dungeon Keeper” is simply something I’ve always been able to say.…

War for the Overworld [official site] creative director Josh Bishop uses the word ‘ridiculous’ quite a bit. It’s understandable. The 22-year-old is on the verge of releasing what is intended to be the first faithful follow-up to beloved strategy/management/Imp-slapping title Dungeon Keeper in 16 years. He leads a studio which has reached as many as 20 members, he’s received £200,000 in Kickstarter pledges, he’s had…

Have You Played? is an endless stream of game recommendations. One a day, every day of the year, perhaps for all time. I’d all but fallen out of PC gaming by the time Dungeon Keeper 2 arrived, but a combination of my student house increasingly preferring electronic entertainment (primarily Tekken) over nightclubs and the news that one of my most beloved games was getting a…

Have You Played? is an endless stream of game recommendations. One a day, every day of the year, perhaps for all time. Yes, of course you have. Wait: unless you think I mean that abomination on smartphones a little while back? No. Nooooo. Ack, between that nasty little thing and the depressing stuff Molyneux's up to these days, it's easy to forget just how good…

There's a mobile version of Dungeon Keeper now. Excited about the prospect of playing Bullfrog's legendary evildoing opus anywhere you please? Well, don't be! It's a terrible, slow-churning "social" experience that subsists on grimy mouthfuls of your time and money. Even Peter Molyneux himself thinks it's "ridiculous." By and large, EA's defended its dubious decisions in a fashion that should not be at all surprising…

Giant corporations traducing classic games to swing a buck – dontcha love 'em? A top-of-the-line current example is EA Mythic's ongoing brutalisation of first Ultima and now Dungeon Keeper into bad freemium tablet games. “If you want to play Dungeon Keeper or Dungeon Keeper 2,” says senior producer Jeff Skalski, flipping the bird and using a golden zippo to torch the Bullfrog logo, “go to…

You know the bit in action movies where Manly Heroman chases Singular Badman around a corner and there's a pause in the action? Everyone is sad because the movie has stopped, but then Heroman comes running and is being chased by Multiple Badmans and we're all happy to see more action? Well, that's kind of what's happening with Kickstarter. Except Heroman is a Kickstarter backer,…

The trouble with games with long names is that it can become impossible to write non-prosaic headlines. For this reason, I demand that War For The Overworld be removed from the internet this instant, and its creators thrown into a fire. ...Which would be be a very silly thing for me to want, given it's a remake/sequel of one of the games I most love,…

There's one surefire way of getting around my wariness about when and if to cover Kickstarter projects here, and that's when Kickstarter projects have already reached their funding goals. As well as being glad tidings in and of themselves, it means I don't risk inadvertently wielding RPS as a flaming sword of financial justice in the event I post about them. Instead I can just…

Edit: cos there are various theories flying around below about my perceived intent in posting this, I shall clarify my own feelings. I would really like to see contracts between publishers and developers more commonly include an arrangement whereby key (and ideally, but rather less plausibly, all) creatives on game projects continue to see some post-release royalties, as is the case in some other entertainment…

Good Old Games are once again scooping up the games of the past, dusting off the cobwebs, teaching them about the future ways, and then setting them free into the internets, unfettered by leashes or DRM. And if you've been concerned that their definition of "Good" has been somewhat loose of late, this time they have some true classics. How classic? Pretty much as classic…

Young people. Good grief. Your ignorance is as plain as those spots on your greasy face. Don't you know anything? Can't you be bothered to learn anything? Did you even read the words of esteemed colleagues Rossignol, Walker and Smith detailing the first three parts of this Olympian list of The Most Important PC Games Of All Time? I am quite sure that I, Deacon…